


You Cleared Up My Scars

by violent_ends



Category: Lucifer (TV)
Genre: Angst and Feels, Angst with a Happy Ending, Established Chloe Decker/Lucifer Morningstar, F/M, Future Fic, Insecure Lucifer, Lucifer Morningstar (Lucifer TV) Needs A Hug, Marriage, Minor Chloe Decker/Lucifer Morningstar, POV Lucifer, Post-Season/Series 04, References to God(s)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-09-12
Updated: 2019-09-12
Packaged: 2020-10-17 03:34:55
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,247
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20614295
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/violent_ends/pseuds/violent_ends
Summary: It's Chloe and Lucifer's wedding day and the Devil is having a bit of a panic attack. A certain someone decides to make Himself known to try and calm him down.Would it help if I told you I thought of your stars when I put gold in her hair? Would it help if I told you I thought of sunlight catching in your wings when I put the spark of life in her eyes? Would it help if I told you I missed you when I chiselled her existence out of nothingness?





	You Cleared Up My Scars

**Author's Note:**

> _Dear Father, how you've come so far_   
_Your love has fixed all of our broken hearts_   
_I hope you're proud, father, of what you've done_   
_It's a lifelong lesson and I'm not pretending when I say_   
_You cleared up my scars_
> 
> _(Scars – Sam Smith)_

Lucifer is having the proverbial pre-wedding jitters. No, hold on, the Devil doesn’t do _jittery_. He’s just… a bit anxious, is all. Pacing back and forth from one end of the penthouse to the other, from the balcony to the elevator and back, he adjusts his cufflinks obsessively to the point where the gesture stops having any actual meaning or practical usefulness and thinks, _What am I doing?_

It’s not like he doesn’t want it, want _her_. Oh, he does. Probably more than he's ever wanted anything else in millennia. He wants her solving crimes all over the city with him at her side, he wants her at the kitchen counter wearing one of his shirts when he makes pancakes for breakfast in the morning, he wants her spread out on his sheets with her arms wide open like Jesus on the cross but happy and waiting for _him_, only him, always, to drown and wash away his sins in the spring of holy water between her thighs.

He wants eternity with her, the eternity she can’t give him but would.

What he doesn’t want is convention, tradition, ceremonial obedience to laws he doesn’t truly answer to. He’s the _Devil_. And yet he’s the one who asked her. She was bathed in the golden light of dawn and his hand couldn’t stop moving in a Heaven loop from her hair to her hip and back up again as she watched him while lying down on her side next to him, sleepy and content after being worshiped all night.

The words tumbled out of his mouth, so blatantly, embarrassingly _human_ of him. She said yes and let him worship her some more.

And now he feels like he’s trapping her, because it all seems final or at least it should, but at some point maybe she’ll want a man who looks his age, _her_ age, and she’ll grow tired of walking around with one who looks like her son or her highly paid toyboy, tired of the stares and the awkwardness. Not that it matters, to him. He can’t wait to count new wrinkles as they form on her skin, to reassure her of the fact that they don’t make any difference, and feels a strange kind of pride in knowing he'll be able to remember the exact moment of their appearance.

He'll never give her children because he doesn’t want any and because he can’t, and she doesn’t care but maybe she’ll change her mind. Marriage probably is the safest, most normal thing he can offer her and it seems like such a small concession on his part. Did she say yes because she felt like she couldn’t say no? Did he corner her into doing something she’ll end up regretting? Would it have been better to leave things as they were and just _live_? What if-

_Samael?_

Lucifer stops pacing.

His voice, _His_ voice, booms and shakes and thunders without actually making a sound, beats heavy and insistent at the door of his mind until it smashes it, kicks it down and enters, without permission, without asking, because He doesn’t need to. It fills his lungs as if it was his own, pulses with a warmth he tries to will away because it’s _Him_ and it’s been so long and Lucifer is _starved_ for it but he can’t let it spread any further, like the disease that it is. His love, poured in his real name like poison in a cup. Rotten and festering and spoiled like the forbidden fruit when it fell from Eve's lips and changed the course of history.

_Samael, why are you so nervous?_

Lucifer scoffs in disbelief, shakes his head and walks out on the balcony again. He reaches up to rake a hand through his hair but stops himself in time: it takes forever to tame his curls and he needs to look perfect today, perfect for _her_. He decides to calm himself with a cigarette instead, and lights one up as he looks at the morning sky.

"You are unbelievable" he tells the air in front of him as the first puff of smoke fills the space there. “Of all the times you could have chosen to catch up, you chose _today_.”

_It seems fitting to me. You were praying for answers to your questions._

He laughs at the very notion, mocks the possibility with a cruel, high-pitched chuckle. Just because he was looking for answers doesn’t mean he was praying for them, and certainly not to _Him_, but then again He’s always had the urge to be the center of attention.

"I don’t need your help with anything, _Dad_” he snaps, emphasizing the last word as if to exorcise its significance. “I didn’t summon you here. I don’t _want_ you here.”

That time has come and gone, back when he actually wanted Him, _needed_ Him; when the skin of his face started burning with hellish fire for the first time and he was scared, so scared, shocked into silence by the magnitude of His punishment. All humans do is talk about how merciful He is, how kind, how forgiving; but not to Lucifer, never to Lucifer, never when it mattered.

_Are you having second thoughts?_

So typical of Him to ignore what was just said and get to the point He wants to make, whatever that might be. Every sentence makes Lucifer’s head pound, makes his heart stutter to a halt before picking up its rhythm again. It’s pathetic, the effect it still has on him after a lifetime of silence. Unbecoming, really. And even more pathetic still, he dignifies the question with an answer, as if His insight is something he still seeks.

"Yes. No. I don’t know" he huffs in exasperation, throwing his free hand in the air, and keeps going as if it’s any of His business, “I want her, I love her, it’s just-"

_Would it help if I told you I thought of your stars when I put gold in her hair? Would it help if I told you I thought of sunlight catching in your wings when I put the spark of life in her eyes? Would it help if I told you I missed you when I chiselled her existence out of nothingness?_

Lucifer gasps, grips the railing to steady himself from the sudden outburst as the cigarette slips from his hand and falls into the void. This is probably the longest He has ever talked in one go. Not even when Lucifer was cast out of Heaven he heard these many words. And the fact that his Father would spend so many of them to speak of _her_, tainting the image of Chloe Lucifer cherishes in his mind, is yet another one of His manipulations, the cruelest, the ugliest, the most ruthless.

Or is it?

Would it help? _Does_ it help?

At first, it hurts. Stings like the tears he won’t allow to come out, burns like the brimstone and ashes of Hell in his throat, aches like the betrayal he felt back when he found out the truth about her. And oh, His audacity in saying He has _missed_ him when Lucifer knows Mum had to stop Father from erasing their son from existence entirely – he can’t stand it. Can’t stand to entertain the possibility that it might be true, despite it all, because then it would mean He never felt the need to say it until now.

"Why are you trying to ruin this for me? Why are you talking to me? Why are you _here_?” he accuses with his eyes shooting daggers up at the sky, the same way he has done so many times before.

And He was never there. Never answered his questions about Father Frank when he cried out in mourning and rage and desperation, never even spare a thought when His precious Lightbringer had his wings cut off to say _Stop, my angel, don’t do this_ \- not that he had wanted Him to, it’s not like that, he’s not that _weak_ and if He actually had, Lucifer would have laughed in His non-corporeal face and told Maze to cut deeper.

Father wasn’t there to tell him everything would be okay when a pair of black leathery wings sprouted from his back, when he uselessly scratched at his skin with his arms around his body to try and make them go away as he stared at the worst part of himself in the mirror, his reflection grinning wickedly like a demon on his way to a torture chamber, and the tortured was still _him_. Lucifer didn’t ask for his Dad's help back then, but he isn’t asking for it now, either.

And yet He makes himself known today, on what is supposed to be the happiest day of Lucifer's life (as humans keep telling him, but it’s only recently that he’s actually starting to believe it) because _of course_ He is, because it’s all about Him, always has been.

Silence. A distant car horn blowing way down below. Then silence, again.

Father doesn’t reply to his stream of questions. He never does when it counts.

Lucifer stares accusingly at the clouds and thinks about what His words mean. Is Chloe… a _gift_ to him, more than a manipulative move at his expense? He doesn’t like the way the thought feels and sits in his head as he ponders, doesn’t like the way it makes Chloe almost seem like a _thing_ at his disposal. She’s not a thing: she is a person, a _miracle_ and Lucifer is done pretending he can escape the pull of her soul even though he still recoils from the knowledge that she was put on Earth to cross paths with him.

It’s a train of thought he keeps tucked away in a drawer, because it can’t matter any longer, not when he loves her as deeply as he does. It’s just the way things are and he has come to terms with it, although he still doesn’t fully understand _why_. Sometimes, when a suspect trying to run occasionally manages to physically hurt him, he feels overwhelmed with the realization that Chloe is basically his Father's long-term assassination attempt against him, one that sooner or later might actually be successful. He still doesn’t care, and embraces his temporary mortality for what it is: a nuisance, the price to pay for the welcomed mercy of her kisses.

But now he wonders if there’s more to it, and thinks about how, ironically, it’s mortality that makes him feel alive; about how he'd take knives, axes, bullets for her (and he has, oh, he has) and every time it happens the pain is never more intense than the relief of knowing she is safe or the wonder and gratitude and adoration at how heartbreakingly worried she is when she takes in the sight of his wounds.

Was it… on purpose, then? For him to feel human, with her? _Equal_ to her? Was it to weaken him as he has always assumed, or to make what they have _stronger_ as a result?

Is it in Chloe’s love for him, that Lucifer can feel loved by God again as a reflection of it? Is it in his own love for her, that he can finally forgive Him? Is this what everything has been about, what it has been truly leading up to?

The irony of the fact that now he has more questions than answers is not lost on Lucifer, of course: it’s his Father’s whole shtick. What fun would it be if He just _gave_ the solution?

But more importantly, does the Devil really wish to have it handed to him?

"I don’t know if I believe you" he confesses after a long sigh, not even sure Dad is listening anymore.

It’s hard to say the words that come next and swallow his pride (_You are too proud, my morning star, more than I intended for you to be_) but he feels strangely liberated once they are out in the open, drifting in the wind towards the beach where his Detective kissed him for the first time, the same where he's going to marry her today, because he _is_ \- Hell, how can he not?

"…but thank you, Father. Thank you, for her.”

She might be a gift, she might be a curse, she might be a weapon or salvation incarnate; she might be all these things combined but all Lucifer really wants is for her to be _his_. And she is.

She is because she chooses to be, every day; her free will shining bright like the palaces of the Silver City in her fierceness and stubborness to pursue leads no one else believes in, to teach her daughter right from wrong even when it forces her to be stricter than she would like, to rock Satan in her arms when he jolts awake from hellish nightmares until he falls asleep again.

Smiling to himself, Lucifer looks down at his watch and realizes what time it is.

"Bloody hell" he mutters, running inside to grab his car keys and hurry.

He presses the elevator’s button to get down to Lux and then outside. As the doors open with their familiar ding, another familiar sound – no, not familiar, not anymore but _close_ \- echoes in his head, not with a thunder but with a whisper, like a secret in his ear.

_Be happy, Samael. I'll be watching._


End file.
